Yes, do it. This is Slashdot, so I can meaningfully recommend what I did: buy a used Android phone like a Pixel 6a or something like that if you don't have one lying around. Then, load it up with iodeOS...there's an app stack that'll replace almost everything you requested.

CoMaps and Sygic GPS both provide these, the latter being $18/year and working completely offline.

Spotify still works; I also use either AntennaPod for podcasts or PowerAmp ($7 once) to play the music I loaded onto it.

...yeah, disconnecting the car makes this one impossible, no getting around it.

OwnTracks, possibly combined with Reitti on the server side if you're feeling a bit extra.

well, Sygic and Comaps both show distance to destination, and the last five cars I've owned have showed me miles-to-empty on the ICE side; I'd imagine the EV side will do the same, and from there it's just a subtraction problem. Sygic does have an EV mode; I don't know how that behaves, but it probably narrows the gap a bit.

Agreed...and that's why the systems are desirable to buyers...but since it's clear that these systems can and will be actively used to make money for the OEM, there's a trade to be made. The aforementioned setup isn't a drop-in replacement, but it checks off many of the things on your list.

That said my car has never shown ads, fuck BMW and I highly recommend no one ever buy their cars.

Yet. BMW has been the most aggressive at post-purchase monetization, but the others will follow.

Well, the thing is that having a frictionless ordering process that allows more sales-per-hour is good if the goal is to sell coffee, but the point of a Starbucks, originally, was to be a 'third place' that wasn't the home or the office, so paying $4 for a cup of coffee or $8 for a thousand-calorie caffeinated milkshake was entirely justifiable when the value proposition was "paying for a place to sit down with a cup of coffee for an hour". Shifting to a coffee pickup location means that the value proposition shifts, and paying half as much for a cup of coffee twice the size at 7-Eleven while I'm getting gas tends to win out on both cost and convenience - dissuading customers from sitting down and hanging out gives fewer reasons for people to *go to Starbucks*.

Likely, but for different reasons. I left T-Mobile about two years ago, after being a customer for over 20 years. They weren't less expensive than Verizon or AT&T anymore, and they pissed me off for other reasons...but having a retail channel means being able to make a few dollars off accessories with new phone sales, it means having a first-point-of-contact with a rep who, at least *used to* help address customer issues from tech support to billing discrepancies, and so forth. I could understand perhaps reducing the number of stores, but if they're going to give the same service level as an MVNO (buy a phone on Amazon, everything is an online transaction), they're going to have to compete on price way better than they currently are.

It's possible that T-Mobile is looking to be a more muted player in the field and quietly make more money by just being the network of the MVNO's, but I don't think they'll be able to compete with Verizon and their retail presence without having a retail presence, any more than they'll be able to compete with the MVNO's on price.

Too late! I already watched it (in 1902).

The amount of countries that could describe is shockingly depressing.

Thanks for sharing!

Ironically, the industry trend of doing SaaS has pushed the need for customer support way up, compared with the traditional model of selling a finished product once and issuing refunds or replacements in rare cases.

That's what they did the last time. And here we are again. And there we'll be again in the future.

None of that responds to my point.

Firstly, US courts have no jurisdiction in most places, so what.

Twoly, copyright is governed by international treaties which *are* ultra-restrictive by their nature. Wishing it wasn't doesn't change the fact that stuff written online has automatic ownership unless explicitly unrestricted. And no, it doesn't need to be strengthened, it already is strong enough. Some say too strong.

Threely, not looking to get rid of AI, looking to make the pirate companies pay, because...The Law. If they disappear, they can be replaced by a new generation of law-abiding AI companies.

Fourly, open source code is explicitly unrestricting copyrights under specific licenses. But open source AI is no such thing, as it's initially copyright encumbered too, due to training issues.

Fifthly, do I personally care about open source AI? No. I care about scientific papers, and I care about new ideas, but I view current state of the art AI as statistical toys. I'd actually like to see *real* progress, which isn't possible as long as everyone rehashes the old ideas (with more GPUs and more bandaids).

Anyway, that's what *bad* AI means to me. That was the topic, no?

The Indian AI call centers didn't last, people didn't like them. The Artificial ones won't last either, for the same reason. Everything old is new again.

The real world locations for shooting are often a result of financial incentives. The studio gets some funding from the local government responsible for the shooting location. It's no different from paid product placement by large private companies, except the product here is the surroundings and the play is for tourism dollars.

Sloppy AI generated cities would be pointless, and quite possibly misrepresenting stakeholders.

Bad AI includes AI that infringes copyrights during the training phase. If this AI has been trained (even partially) on content found on the Internet, then it's bad AI. (*)

(*) There is no fair use or implied consent for documents sitting on web servers around the world. Either there's an explicit licensing agreement by the actual copyright holder that permits you to copy the file to your computer, or you're infringing, Mr AI.

Don't forget that training is a one-off snapshot in time. That's why training must be repeated regularly. There's no learning in between trainings for foundation models.

generally-better-than-a-large-pc-of-the-population does not mean good-salary. For a good salary you'd have to be in the minority at the top, where statistics breaks down.

Hear, hear! I was able to poop this morning too, it was wonderful... Kids these days just don't know the value of things!

"You" are already committing money to them, through "your" pension funds, via SpaceX, and other vulnerable F500s. The game on "you" has already been played, because xAI is how SpaceX is connected through the maze of fake IOUs.